"Call it a tent city, or Hooverville -- or, more appropriately, call it Bushville"

As I watch the campaigns of Obama and McCain play out, I can't help but remember those fateful words uttered by Reagan that devastated Jimmy Carter in the 1980 run for the White House:

"Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

Simple, to the point and unbelievably effective. 

Frankly, I don't know of anyone who is better off today than they were four years ago, and things were bad for most of us four years ago....

Amid The Bailout, We Can't Afford To Abandon The Homeless

Susan Campbell

October 5, 2008

The guy sounds angry -- or maybe scared. Either way, I don't blame him. I have, after all, wandered into his living room without an invitation. He doesn't know me, and if our roles were reversed, I'd be angry/scared, too.

His crash pad is at the back of the old Waterford Drive-In, which closed in the early '80s. All that's left is a curled ribbon of broken pavement, rusty speaker poles sprung up with the saplings, and the skeleton of a screen. The few tattered pieces of white screen that remain look like peeling skin.

There's a remnant of a tiled floor, and behind that is a broken fence. If you stand at the opening and call out, a gruff voice answers back, "Leave me alone." Last November, a 43 year-old man living in the area was killed out on Boston Post Road, and just like last year, homeless people too drunk, too mentally ill, living lives too complicated to seek shelter are congregating there.

Call it a tent city, or Hooverville -- or, more appropriately, call it Bushville. During the day, the residents of Bushville are all but invisible, but the signs are here, like clothes carefully hung over tree limbs to dry; like fresh trash, not the trampled, sun-bleached stuff that's blown in from a nearby parking lot. Across the street from a Starbucks, and the Waterford Republicans' office, the people who've been left behind are building shelters of their own.

The same thing is happening in Hartford, Waterbury, New Haven, in any town of any size. The shelters fill up, or a handful of people choose to remain outside, and they gather under a bridge, down by the river, behind the old snack bar. There's safety in numbers in these modern-day Bushvilles. There is a hierarchy and a sense of protection.

Catherine Zall, executive director of New London's Homeless Hospitality Center, knows the area. So long as the people don't encroach on private property, the police mostly leave them alone, says Father Russ Carmichael, area homeless advocate. At the insistence of the city council, Zall's 50-bed shelter recently began administering Breathalyzer tests to anyone who comes to stay. Not every homeless person is an alcoholic, but substance abuse runs a thick vein through the population. The policy is unpopular with shelter workers; Zall, a part-time Congregational minister, says it's moved some people who normally would seek shelter indoors to remain outside. In this most delicate of demographics, the tipping point can be that small.

There are a lot of people falling through the cracks, says Carol Walter, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness.Yo

u've heard that before. You'll hear it more as the holidays roll around. It's nothing new, but the demographics of the homeless are changing. There are more families, more children, and the notion that people can't afford housing, or that there are inadequate mental health services in a state that is home to some beneficiaries of the unprecedented Wall Street bailout is, in a word, obscene.

At January's point-in-time homeless survey, the most common reason given for homelessness was trouble paying rent. The people at the New London Catholic Charities office say they're performing triage as fast as they can. People started asking for assistance in paying for their heat a month ago, in anticipation of the squeeze.

When the next round of state budget discussions comes around, the money set aside for emergency housing, permanent supportive housing, AIDS housing and the like cannot be compromised. When things get tight, it's all too easy for decision-makers to lop off the bottom of the budget and let those most in need fend for themselves. That can't happen this time. It just can't.

• Contact Susan Campbell at scampbell@courant.com, 860-241-6454, or courant.com/susan.